Archive: Organizing

Last year I started to organize a yard composting group based on the idea of providing sustainable organic nutrients to my gardening efforts, and reducing waste. While I have an established composting “system” in my yard, and a few others worked on their own methods, the organization efforts fell through due to external stuff.

Well, this time, I want to move on to something that would benefit from group experience. Not sure if everyone I’m emailing is interested in this, but I want to build a chicken coop and raise chickens in my back yard. The benefits are immense… fresh eggs, fertilizer, reduced pests (fireants and fleas among them!), etc.. And while raising chickens is not that hard, there are some aspects of it that would benefit from group sharing of experience – building a coop, dealing with predators (I know raccoons will be an issue for me!), getting chicks past their first 60 days among them.

And all of this stems from the greater issues of economy, ecology and health. Jenna and I are making many small steps to improve our quality of living smartly – reducing plastic usage, building up a garden for vegetables, water filtration. Raising chickens seems like a logical piece of the puzzle.

I’ve sent this to homeowners I know, ones who are interested in sustainability in one way or another. I made a possibly faulty assumption that renters would have a harder time with keeping chickens. However, this limited email list is not to exclude them or anybody else if you want to bring them on board. And I’m not interested in being nothing more than an emailing list. I want us to work on projects, share experiences in personal ways. And I completely understand if you can’t commit to something like this. I’m looking for a show of hands right now.

I researched a few books on the subject if you’re interested, compiled as a small Amazon wish list (it was an easy way to aggregate the stuff). Personally, I’ll search the library or Half Price first.